Bonding
by Ruffis Pennyhill
Summary: Logan Avery cheats the government out of a lot of money and pushes the wrong NCIS agent over the edge
1. Chapter 1

**The room was empty and cold, well it may as well have been empty, and the pathetic figure hunched over may as well have been any one of these impenetrable walls.**

**He had screamed for hours, his voice soon turning to a hoarse whisper, if it was to God even he did not know.**

**Cold murky water filled to his knees, bitter at taste and horrible to look in its condemned reflection of false hope – only to look into it and see you, the Condemned.**

**Fear bounced off the walls, isolation crept up the spine and the very idea that you were the man who spoke of "A Government watching over all" abandoned.**

**He was a good man, smart and inquisitive too but it did not take question to know why.**

**He had often asked "why" to the walls or at every undistinguished noise that filled here – he wanted to hear the voice, just to hear it and have at least that recollection of the man that kept him so.**

**The walls even talked to him now – there harsh whispers like every one who had made it there folly to lose themselves in the darkness.**

"**You betrayed your country" they seemed to giggle like a child with a jump rope, a horrible sound that personified his sanity.**

**Right under the governments nose – there filthy, greedy nose, Not to say he was or was not guilty of his acts – this government chained him to the floor, let him see into his own reflection and beg for death to come upon the filthy water he look into!**

**A door opened, the man had never come to know there was a door in this blinding darkness, a muffled splash that seemed it to bring to his imagination a horrible beast that lingers in the dark.**

"**Do you have what I want Mr. Avery?! My friends tell me I am an impatient man."**

**There that voice, not near what the befuddled Logan Avery had expected, it was not soft but it was knowing – a feeling that he had revealed every secret, every lie and all deceit he had seen in his life,**

**It was a voice that felt pain and saw through the pathetic attempt of this loyal man who went home to his wife every day and told her how much he loved her.**

**It was more freighting that what he had led this moment up to be in his mind – a ruthless voice that saw him as the average man.**

**An instant passed, and he was off the floor this man and along too many dark chambers to count or would want to – a devious office boy who had stolen a great deal of money and was now trying to provide a heroic escape.**

**The arms that grabbed him were iron at feel and even in the darkness he could feel the cold gaze slicing away at him, tearing him down.**

"**W-who are you," Avery's voice at a steady low key shakes that echoed the halls with little fear unlike the many movies he had watched."**

**The voice returned barely noticing him like he was talking to himself; his answer was unconscious to his mind.**

"**NCIS" **

**The man who seemed to be iron took an immediate turn and the tunnels and chambers began to surface steadily – the water receding drastically though.**

"**I –have never heard of you, government any doubt, phish!"**

**Even at the fear that Avery felt at him, he could not help but to reflect his personal opinion – organization after organization CIA, FBI, IRS**

**They were starting to sound like a football organization.**

"**You," he said blandly with no care of Avery's life in the slightest, "call me Gibbs, I have a damn good feeling we are going to be hearing of each other a hell of a lot more once I get u on a leash!"**

**His voice did more than echo it relayed the whole conversation like a tape recorder several times.**

**At up the way it went winding upward on this maze – Avery's thoughts were of the words, his mind begged to go back into the dark, deathly tunnels but his body drudged further with unwanted help grasping his neck.**

**Moving forward**

**However much forward was left for him **

**Gibbs….**

**That was the name – a beacon setting in his mind; Don't piss him off.**


	2. Puppet

**Trust; seemed now as winding and unsure as the tunnels that were blinding and the patrons of fear, looming onward in its presence. **

**If the tunnels ever ended it would prove to be more like trust than ever to come to the mind – disappointment and failure falling in close second to you – bleak in your shadow.**

**Leroy Jethro Gibbs could not have cared less for the disgrace of the pathetic hunched man wheezing at his side, hands patting loudly the sides of the walls as if to break one with such force from his soft pen suited hands.**

**And then for the man a light, the winding tunnels winding and fading into the darkness that had bound him – that man that horrible man, his glazing gaze of iron and a cold that pierced his wandering eyes – the man was a bad dream, a horror that would pass as the days.**

**Ironic he was a Government Man.**

**The dream was gone and he would be awake – the fright to open his eyes though still there.**

**Open.**

**Vance had put into exercise something off the books; this was a big hush and personally the initials NCIS had never quite come off to sound trusting over such a loss of money.**

**Vance could play by the books but when one stereotypical contradiction for a major pull off falls through the cracks he proffered any means necessary – don't haggle over lawyers because all they had was suspicion and with the right trials they could loss a lot more than the money prior.**

**Gibbs, now looking back amazed at how that fit him; he was who he wanted playing the cards on this one; and with that Vance put the thought aside and suddenly felt a rather empathy for Mr. Avery.**

**Logan Avery opened his eyes to find himself on a cold hard metal table with the smell of cleaning spray and a hint of dry blood – Avery had a good many phobias but lying on a metal slab facing a blinding light seemed pretty rational, as was the man from his nightmares.**

**Add that to the list of fears, he noted dully, men of iron and winding tunnels.**

**He was going crazy, he thought.**

"**Well, well, well … it is not often I get live visitors and very rare that they do not realize how close you are to death," muttered someone from out of view – the light blinding him now instead of the previous darkness before.**

**For only a second Avery hoped he was a dream skipper and that at any time a new one would present itself, preferably a beach or somewhere tropical that the sun could beat down upon him.**

**No**

**Not only was he afraid of travel and the vast amount of insects that would accompany in his suit case, he also feared the water, and liked a desolate view of it to pretend as if he could brave walking its shores and adventures.**

**Gibbs wanted nothing to do with him – but he would savor the moment that he looked him into the eyes and told him to his greasy face that where he was going he would pray for any type of government.**

**It may have been what kept him going now, teetering on the edge of giving up but he would see the look in his eyes when he demanded vigorously a lawyer, see the defeat in his squeamish eyes.**

**Logan Avery entered the interrogation room at a reluctant pace, the man Dinozzo had giggled like a school girl with many good luck works and a number of movie references that Avery had been taken with at first, but after a quote or two he regretted complementing the man who led him to the door and alone.**

**Like a child alone in the darkness of the woods.**

**The man was real – he had not seen him clearly in the darkness but now he gazed upon everyone with a stern eye as if sizing them – this added to the fear, now he had no darkness to hide in,…. just a rat.**

**Vance sternly called to Gibbs with a gaze as he was heading at no more than a jog to the interrogation room to see Avery fall.**

**At a last minute effort Vance rewarded himself with the efficiency and triumph.**

"**At precisely the time of the transaction of money being transferred – he's got a loop – his nieces wedding was taking place, Gibbs you cant go in there." There was a hollow sound in Vance's voice that this was just another guy but the truth was he wanted to watch him go down in a blow of realization that Avery could not do whatever he wanted.**

**A suppressed anger formed in Gibbs eyes, "Give me ten minutes with him Leon, I don't need alibi – he's a rat!"**

**Gibbs wanted him bad and Leon Vance could feel his gut pulsing for conviction, he wanted to bring him down and watch him fall too.**

" **As sorry as I am to tell you this and as sure as I am he has committed injustices before, he did not do this and furthermore he is just a puppet in order to bring down the puppet master you need all you can get from the one whose strings are being pulled,**

**That's Avery –**

**He's going to help us find the master of this sheared and bring him to his knees."**

**Gibbs never got to watch him fall – **

**in the end the puppet would most likely lose time for helping capture the master and ending the show… it was going to be a long road ahead **


End file.
